Friday, March 31, 2006

I remember when Maria Sharapova was quoted as saying, "I want to gain a bit of weight, but I would prefer it to be muscle."

Looks like she did it. @@ Those arms and shoulders are so huge it's freaky! Am not sure if I'd be comfortable around this girl either. Great that she'd probably be able to defend herself from bad guys though.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

So we were doing our family Bible study, and were reading the first five chapters of 1 Samuel. Check out 1 Samuel ch 4, verses 1 to 11.

Now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines, and encamped beside Ebenezer; and the Philistines encamped in Aphek. Then the Philistines put themselves in battle array against Israel. And when they joined battle, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who killed about four thousand men of the army in the field. And when the people had come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, "Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh to us, that when it comes among us it may save us from the hand of our enemies." So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from there the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.

And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. Now when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, "What does the sound of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews mean?" Then they understood that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp. So the Philistines were afraid, for they said, "God has come into the camp!" And they said, "Woe to us! For such a thing has never happened before. Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. Be strong and conduct yourselves like men, you Philistines, that you do not become servants of the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Conduct yourselves like men, and fight!"

So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent. There was a very great slaughter, and there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. Also the ark of God was captured; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

When I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark as a kid, I found the plot a little humourous. Here was Hitler going around looking for the famed Ark of God because he thought that it would aid him in battle. As one museum curator said in the movie, "The one who carries the ark into battle is invincible!" Eh, so not true, as my mind immediately went to the above passage. The Israelites were putting their trust in an artifact of God, rather than God himself, which is why they lost the battle. Truth be told, the entire nation was already in that type of mindset at the time, but the point is, they put their trust in the ark when they shouldn't have. Now here was Hitler repeating the same mistake. It was funny.

When I glanced over this passage tonight, it brought back that memory. But something even funnier struck me. Here was Hitler, claiming that the Jews were scum of the earth and needed to be eradicated, and yet searching for a Jewish artifact to help him win World War II!

Don't think about the childhood memories. The more you do, the higher probability you have of destroying their coolness. I can't believe how stupid the plot looks now....

Sunday, March 26, 2006

So given that I originally wanted to be a ninja when I grew up, I have to say that I still find them interesting. I remember having a ninja sword when I was a kid, and carrying it everywhere throughout the house. It was great. But it was plastic, and eventually broke in half.

But even now, they are really cool. I came across a hilarious video on real ninjas. Check it out. As for me, I am still perfecting the art of invisibility, and hope to use those skills in a game of Capture the Flag at night.... :D Who wants to play??

YJ and I went to Whistler today. We started off at 7th Heaven on Blackcomb, somehow went off the trail, and I ended up skiing in a forest. It was... interesting. But the snow and weather were both perfect. :D

Thursday, March 23, 2006

So while I was helping out at Habitat for Humanity last week, this guy tried to drive a point home while jumping around on a pile of dirt to firm up the ground in a trench we had just refilled:

Don't let anyone kill your inner child.

It's something I've always kept in mind, but the female species have a tendency to slaughter your desire to be carefree, simple, and full of wonder. More on that later.

On Monday, Victor called me ad hoc and we decided to go to Cypress for some night-skiing. He mentioned how people at work were talking about our childhood TV shows, and how if you watched them today, they would look really stupid. In particular, the A-Team. Apparently, Mr. T isn't actually that cool. I learned my lesson with Transformers. The movie's still great, but I can't watch the series, it'd ruin the childhood memories.

On Tuesday, the guys at work were discussing the exact same thing. This time, it was G.I. Joe.

This morning, I went to a seminar on how to do service well, presented by the Disney Institute. It was pretty revealing. Simple and obvious ideas and concepts, but as they noted, it's the execution that's difficult. They believe it's unacceptable to destroy your childhood memories. They strive to make it always magical when you go to Disneyworld.

One realization I've had over the years? I guess I really don't care about what people think of me in the end. That would kill my inner child. I'll keep him safe, thank you very much. But he'll usually only come out for people who also appreciate inner children as well. And it seems there are less of those in the female species. So I'll just go drink from the fountain of youth and drown in it. :)

Friday, March 10, 2006

I just wanna say that I haven't forgotten. Working on an idea right now that could be really cool. Would also like to say that John Andru's done an awesome job with One Day for AIDS. We'll have to do something special to make sure it keeps going after he leaves.

Canucks brought in some great players, but I think Edmonton's the team that upgraded the most. Looking forward to April 12! :)

Last year's version of Fallen has to be Boulevard of Broken Dreams, by Green Day. But I think Quiet Drive's Rise from the Ashes has just displaced it, even though thematically it's slightly different. Yay.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

I've been meaning for a long time to comment on Google. The company that can consistently make my jaw drop with its innovations. The company whose share price I thought would never break $200 US (though perhaps I can fell vindicated that the stock dropped a little bit, and is definitely down from its 52-week high of $475.11 on January 11, 2006). Illiad did a short commentary on Google (starting here), and I thought this particular comic was fantastic. With Google's latest strategic stumble being not properly handling criticism over its strategy to enter China (and depending on your perspective, its whole approach to China as well), I thought the time was ripe to write my thoughts on this amazing company. Not that it hasn't been done already by thousands of others already. But then TIME printed a cover story with the emblazoned words "Can We Trust Google With Our Secrets? An exclusive inside look at the $100 billion empire that is dominating the Internet". February 20, 2006. So you can go read that instead.... TIME can do the commentary much better than I ever could.

Who is PakG1?

I'm a Vancouver Canuck fan now living across the pond in China. My interests include disruption, global trends, Go (also known as Baduk or Weiqi), information asymmetry, games, innovation, languages, reading, skiing, and volunteering.